More Fun Comics #11 (23)
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMore Fun Comics #11 (23) is a densely packed Golden Age anthology that captures Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster at maximum creative velocity on two fronts simultaneously. It delivers the concluding chapter of the 'The Life Ray' arc in the Doctor Occult strip — the earliest continuously published supernatural-detective feature in American comics — while also advancing the Radio Squad feature the same duo debuted in More Fun #11 (July 1936), one of the medium's first explorations of radio-dispatch police procedure as dramatic subject matter. The issue thus represents a single moment in which Siegel and Shuster were running two distinct genres in parallel for the same publisher, testing the storytelling grammar that would soon feed directly into Superman. Doctor Occult himself holds the distinction of being the earliest recurring, originally created character still active in the DC Universe, making any chapter of his serialized run a building block of that lineage.
In "The Brain, Part 4," the underwater city of Merlinia pulses with tension as the striking and ruthless ruler Claudia makes her move, offering Brad Hardy a throne at her side—though he’s clearly uninterested. Penciled and inked by Tom Hickey, this early DC adventure unfolds with a blend of mystery and menace, while Vin Sullivan’s cover captures the stark drama of the moment.
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More Fun Comics was the flagship anthology of National Allied Publications — the direct ancestor of DC Comics — and the first American comic book to feature entirely original material rather than newspaper-strip reprints. Publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson had recruited Siegel and Shuster as contributors beginning with New Fun Comics #6 (October 1935), where they debuted Doctor Occult under the pseudonyms 'Leger and Reuths,' partial anagrams of their surnames. By mid-1937 the two creators had become prolific enough to be running multiple features in the anthology concurrently; this issue falls within that window. The Doctor Occult feature throughout its run was credited to those pen names even as Siegel and Shuster signed the Radio Squad strip under their own names in the same issues.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: August 1937; absolute series number #23 (also labeled v2#11 in the GCD sequence), published by National Allied Publications/DC.
- The Dr. Occult story in this issue is 'The Life Ray, Part 6 (of 6)' — the concluding chapter of that arc — written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster under the pseudonyms 'Leger and Reuths.'
- In this chapter, Doctor Occult and Nita Crane are compelled by the villain the Lord of Life to rob a museum; Rose Psychic discovers them in the act; on returning empty-handed to the Lord's lair, Occult is flogged by the villain's henchmen.
- The Lord of Life is ultimately torn apart by his own enraged victims in this concluding episode; his chief henchman Zolar survives with his fate unresolved — a loose end the DC Fandom wiki notes was later echoed by a Shuster-drawn villain of the same name in Action Comics #30.
- This issue notably expands the Doctor Occult feature from three pages to four, the first such expansion for the strip according to DC Fandom editorial notes.
- The Radio Squad feature (launched as 'Calling All Cars' in More Fun Comics #11, July 1936 by Siegel and Shuster) continues here with officers Sandy Kean and Larry Trent; Sandy Kean was the strip's original lead, with Trent receiving increasing billing as the feature matured — the two characters together ran in More Fun Comics through issue #87 (January 1943).
- Doctor Occult had first appeared in New Fun Comics #6 (October 1935) and his supporting partner Rose Psychic first appeared in More Fun Comics #19 (March 1937); both appear in this issue's story, making this a chapter in the ongoing serialized relationship between those two characters.
- More Fun Comics as a series was the nursery for the earliest DC Universe characters, including Doctor Occult (1935), the Spectre (1940), Doctor Fate (1940), Green Arrow, Aquaman (both 1941), and Superboy (1945); this 1937 issue falls squarely in the middle of its most creatively fertile pre-superhero phase.
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Claudia, the extremely beautiful but cruel ruler of the underwater city of Merlinia, wants the Brad Hardy, to rule by her side...but he wants no part of that.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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